Rise and Grind
Are you rising to your goals or falling to your habits?
We are all guilty of it. We set a goal, put in half-assed effort, justify the failure by saying it doesn’t work, then resort back to our old habits.
“DON’T CHANGE THE GOAL TO MATCH YOUR LACK OF EFFORT, CHANGE YOUR LACK OF EFFORT TO MATCH THE GOAL.”
Are you rising to your goal? Are you doing what you need to do to get the goal achieved? Are you working on achieving this goal relentlessly?
OR
Are you changing your goal to match your lack of effort and resorting back to your old habits?
“Habits need to change in order to maintain a consistent drive forward. You can’t keep doing the same things over and over expecting a different result.”
“If you keep doing what you’ve always done, you’ll keep getting what you’ve always gotten”
Take the “Read one book per month” example. Let’s say you need to read eight pages per day to reach your goal of one book per month. You know what you need to do; are you doing it? Or are you justifying an excuse not to do it?
You need to say no to old habits. Maybe that's giving up wine at dinner instead of polishing off an entire bottle. Maybe it's spending part of your lunch break reading rather than sitting about bitching about other employees. Maybe it's sitting down and reading a book to your kids for ten minutes each day rather than doing something else during their quiet time.
Whatever the goal, your old habits get lonely and want you back.
Your old habits are programmed into you, but there is nothing saying you can't reprogram your thought process.
Smokers have quit smoking, addicts have beaten addiction, out of shape people get in shape everyday, bad students get good grades, less than mediocre athletes become team captains, and so on.
It takes a pool of decisions and a steady grind to rise to the goals you set. And those decisions have to start by changing your bad habits.
